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The Secret in Contemporary Theory, Society, and Culture

The Secret in Contemporary Theory, Society, and Culture

Publié le par Marc Escola (Source : University of Kent)

Reminder (deadline: 30 September 2014).
The Secret in Contemporary Theory, Society, and Culture

 Call for Articles


Following the recent success of The Secret in Contemporary Theory,  
Society, and Culture, a two day postgraduate conference held at the  
University of Kent, we are calling for contributions to a future issue  
of Skepsi, the online interdisciplinary research journal, run by  
postgraduate students of the University of Kent's School of European  
Culture and Languages, and now in its sixth year.

In an effort to capture and expand the broad and interdisciplinary  
interest in the Secret, we are seeking to gather ideas, explorations,  
critiques and theories that examine this topic. In revealing the  
governmental practice of spying on millions of conversations, the  
Snowden case triggered a sudden upheaval in the definition of public  
and private spheres. It has also prompted us to question what  
constitutes a secret, and what function secrets have in society today.

Some of the questions in which we are interested include: How does the  
formation of a secret inform, and how is it informed by, the boundary  
separating the private from the public sphere? What ethical issues are  
involved in questions of transparency, concealment, and revelation?  
Does the conventional understanding of the secret ? rightly or wrongly  
? presuppose a hidden ?truth? buried beneath the lack of meaning at  
the level of language? Is the secret itself a function of something  
like Derrida?s ?différance?, and therefore an illusion or mere  
surface-effect of language?

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following and  
their interrelations:


·    Power relationships: what kinds of power relationships can exist  
between a secret holder and those who do not, or wish to, know it? Who  
does a secret alienate?


·    Sociological and anthropological approaches to secrets:  
collective and individual secrets and the question of surveillance;  
how secrets vary across cultures.


·    Language and communication: does interpreting a text reveal its  
secret(s)? Or is there a semantic void within any text, the lack of a  
fixed signified or ?secret?, which nonetheless generates its apparent  
meaning(s)? What is a coded language?


·    Secrets in Literature, and in the Visual and Plastic Arts.


·    Secret Histories: subaltern and other marginalised histories;  
Nationalism, identity, and concealing or reinventing the past; the  
role of State secrets in history; how the definition and function of  
the secret has changed in history.


·    Philosophical approaches to secrets (analytic and continental):  
do secrets exist? Are they logically possible? What relations are  
maintained between secrets, language, and intersubjectivity, and  
between secrets and the unconscious?


·    Psychological and psychoanalytic perspectives on the structure  
and function of secrets. Emotional responses (guilt, shame, etc.).


Submissions are invited from academic staff, postgraduate students and  
independent scholars. Any of the submitted articles selected by the  
Editorial Board after peer review will be published in a forthcoming  
issue of the journal, to be published in Spring 2015.

Articles, which should not exceed 5,000 words, should be sent,  
together with an abstract of about 250 words and brief biographical  
details about the author, to:

skepsi@kent.ac.uk<mailto:skepsi@kent.ac.uk>

The deadline for submission is 30 September 2014.

_________
Skepsi is a peer reviewed postgraduate journal based in the School of  
European Culture and Languages at the University of Kent and funded by  
the University of Kent (http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/skepsi/).